Don't ask, don't tell? Just end it

Published 5:30 pm, Monday, February 8, 2010

Pentagon chiefs are beginning to acknowledge openly that gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly in the military. Unfortunately, real life changes faster than Congress does.

The 1993 law commonly known as "don't ask, don't tell" was passed by Congress in the early days of President Bill Clinton's administration as a classic compromise: It pleased neither side. The so-called "reform" did no more than codify into federal law what already had been military rules: If your commander finds out that you're a gay man or lesbian, you can be immediately discharged.

As Defense Secretary William Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee, it "doesn't leave a lot to the imagination or a lot of flexibility" for, say, a commander who does not want to lose valuable personnel who otherwise are serving honorably, simply because they happen to be homosexual.

Simple fairness tells us that a law should punish people for what they do, not for who they are, especially when the law actually hurts national security more than it helps. That was the sensible message that Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the committee with his call to overturn the law as "the right thing to do."

"I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens," he said. "For me personally, it comes down to integrity -- theirs as individuals and ours as an institution."

Yet neither man said the change would come soon. First, said Mullen and Gates, there will be a Pentagon review, taking up to a year. In other words, after 17 years of military and civilian studies of the law's effectiveness--and ill effects--we're going to have yet another year of study.

That's disappointing for gay rights advocates after President Obama in his State of the Union address reaffirmed his opposition to a law that "denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are." But, for Congress which is not filled with profiles in courage on such touchy matters, the delay kicks this politically explosive grenade down the road, safely past the November midterm elections, while the military deals with it in a military way: They can quietly defuse the ban on their own.

While the big yearlong review is underway, Gates said, the Pentagon will undertake a 45-day internal review and move toward enforcing the existing policy "in a fairer manner." Let's hope that means an end to the most badly abused aspect of existing law: It forces the discharge of otherwise law-abiding service members whose sexual orientation is revealed by third parties such as jilted partners or spurned would-be lovers of the opposite sex.

If there is any good news in the delay it is how, the more time passes, the more public opinion swings against the ban. In its early days, Gen. Colin Powell, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said gays serving openly would undermine "morale, good order and discipline." Ironically, the nation's first black chairman of the Joint Chiefs used the same words that Gen. Dwight Eisenhower used during World War II to argue against the racial desegregation of our troops.

Powell has since changed his mind. "Attitudes and circumstances have changed," he said last week. "Society is always reflected in the military. It's where we get our soldiers from."

Thomas Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning defense journalist who now is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, offers this helpful suggestion on his blog at Foreign Policy magazine's site: "When you read objections to lifting the ban, note the age of the writer," he said. "I wouldn't worry much about anyone who left the military before 1990."

Although my own military days are way behind me (I was drafted into the Army at the tail end of the Vietnam era), Ricks offers good advice. Polls and numerous anecdotes indicate that, while us older vets tend to recoil at the idea of dropping the ban, younger folks inside and outside the military think the transition will be a lot easier and less eventful than we old geezers think it will.